Fences

A rewrite of an earlier post. So often it boils down to hanging out the laundry not fully washed.

Fences

Imagine the countries of Europe erecting Auschwitzian wire fences

with no man’s land between: grassy lanes of ragworth, thistle and buttercup.

Imagine, like water released into channels, migrants entering these paths,

growing from trickle to torrent, eventually filling them; a teeming mass

constantly jostled onward to no destination. The seasons passing,

summer to winter, the grassy paths turned to mud, then frozen under snow;

a metre to either side, border guards watching with disinterested expressions.

Imagine these human streams flowing across the map of Europe

serenaded with the music of its civilization, Hungary, Austria, the Czech Republic:

Mozart, Bartok, Mahler…….,

and the migrant contemplating freedom beyond that barbed wire fence;

a perspective so horrifying less than the span of one lifetime ago.

Perspective

I’ve been seeing January migrations of geese in the powder blue sky above Dublin;

those ever-shifting arrows sign-posting exotic, faraway countries are in my thoughts

when a full-stop moves from the text into the blank margin of the page I’m reading.

I watch it moving up the page, wondering how much purpose a dot-sized creature can have?

At the top it turns right, making for the gorge between the two pages;

its slow progress suggesting rough terrain: clints and grykes, a burren’s uneven pavements.

A newscaster’s voice cuts into the moment  ̶  95 people dead on a street in Kabul  ̶

I lose sight of the full stop;

how high up, I wonder, must one be for our atrocities to be so small that they appear insignificant.

Three views of the universe

I am sitting on a park bench,

 a pool of sunlight before me,

 a cosmos of flies

are stars in Brownian motion.

A city park after midnight.

I am arrested by moths in lamp-light,

their sudden brilliance, meteorites

streaking from invisibility to invisibility.

A stream in afternoon sunlight,

 the innumerable scintillations, pulsing.

Again I see the universe;

and, like beauty, it has no scale.

Saint Féichín's Prayer on High Island *

Between the troubled sea and fickle sky,

this island barely more than raft,

this church a mast,

and you, my Lord, Jesus Christ, the sail

delivering us from monsters

that daily beset us in our voyage.

I strap myself to this stone, consecrated

with your cross and invite my penance:

flails lifted from the swell, nails

You spit to cleanse us.

I present myself, a rag on a thorn,

a cold flame awaiting the warmth of Your forgiveness.


*Saint Féichín founded a monastery on this tiny, remote island off the Galway coast in 634. There are some photographs at  http://www.earlychristianireland.net/Counties/galway/high_island/

Book Launch of 'The Pornographer's Model': Short Stories by Kevin Hora

Looking forward to the launching of Kevin Hora's chapbook, 'The Pornographer's Model', next Thursday, May 2nd, at 6.30pm in Kevin St Library, Dublin . I rate him highly; his stories are imaginative, finely crafted, intriguing. The depth of care taken shines out from his writing; his sharp intelligence is constant and consistent throughout. He is one for the future; I'm recommending you come to see for yourself.

Manet's 'The Railway': another view

A curiosity beyond bars; children are so used to 

bars.

The smoke, not the engine; not the source, but its 

obfuscation.

The wonder that was everything, before the indifference

of adulthood.

Ending, Beginning

Tidying Away

Thirty years of documents, notebooks, letters;

packing myself into a black plastic bag:

the defunct Michael; unfulfilled,

forgotten, abandoned Michael.

The Michael that was clogging up the box room;

I'm fucking him out;

ambitions, cares, memories:  

all of it.

Shelves emptied

to a new tidiness,

a smaller Michael;

space.

Failing Light

In the failing light of a November evening,

kicking through the rotting leaves on a suburban path,

I remember you, digging the garden ridges, shaking out

the groundsel, tossing the stones under the hedge.

Great events in your kingdom were scurryings in the grass,

a thrush feeding on a worm, raindrops falling from the apple trees.

Far from inspectors and reports, you held sway over

the straightening of ridges, regiments of onions and lettuces.

With each passing year, you are buried deeper beneath memory,

becoming ever more intangible, like these rotting leaves

that leave only their scent hanging in the dank November air;

after all this time, you have become more like a book I once read.

Treasure

The sun, smashed on the river, makes a million smithereens.

I lie face down on the bank, make a bowl of my hands and scoop

them up, as I would a shoal of minnows. Then, inspecting

my treasure, I find no diamonds, just a dwindling pool of water.

I shake my hands dry, and promise myself,

“one day, Michael, you will own a house beside water.”

How far up is the blue of the sky?

Even the sky doesn’t know,

but searches inside itself

as the old men with coats and jackets

went searching for letters in pockets

that were around the inside, and sometimes

inside another again. They searched,

and usually searched  in vain.

But the smoke from their pipes

went searching, upward and around,

always curious, prying and thorough

in a desultory sort of way;

heading towards the answer, but

much like the old men themselves,

never having the energy to get there.

Rain as a Mood

  

Right now, rain

is my only jacket;

its soft viciousness,

clamping the throats of songbirds,

stokes my anger.

Fists dug deep into pockets,

knuckles, egg-boned, gagged;

I slump into the pours,

draw its bullets

like food.

Almost not at all

I am almost not at all;

teetering on the brink of invisibility,

incorporeal, and rudderless  on the interface

of a nebulous past, unfathomable future.

Not seeing myself; insubstantial in both worlds;

I am more echo than shout;

a man whose atoms are disbanding;
less,
a dispersal of waves.

Emigration never left

There was a time, maybe thirteen or fourteen years ago when it seemed the country was rid, once and for all, of the sad days of mass emigration. All was lift; then came the collapse. Now, Dublin is vibrant again, but in many rural parts it's the old story of population decline, absence of youth, absence of vigour.

The scene I'm describing seemed like it was becoming less relevant, but unfortunately no.

No People

The hunch-doubled thorns,

ingrown pantries

dung-puddled;

the moss-stone walls

tumble-gapped.

The nettle-cracked doorway,

lintel-fallen

byre-footed;

the cloud curtained windows

elder-berried.

The stone-sheltered air

bumbled still,

ruin-reverent;

the submerged garden ridges

dumb-founded.

Crosses in a snow-covered military cemetery.

These crosses seem to rise from oblivion

and carry oblivion on their shoulders.

In their ranks, each is unaware of the next,

as though the world must teeter on him alone.

And silence is the law, since all around is silent;

each one white as the ground he stands on.

Workshop Tips for Poetry Beginners

1.       Check that details included as factual are accurate.

2.       Check that words you have used do not have unplanned, unhelpful connotations.

3.       Colloquialisms should be used for definite purpose or effect; casually inserted, they often jar.

4.       Use ‘like’ and ‘as’ sparingly e.g. the train crawled out of the station like a caterpillar.

5.       Avoid explaining yourself; imagery or other poetic mechanisms may provide a necessary clarification.

6.       Avoid moralizing.

7.    Beware of lines you really like in your poems; if they are 'stand out' to you, they'll quite possibly unbalance the boat.

8.       Avoid changes of style in a poem, unless there is a specific purpose (e.g. the sudden appearance of rhyme).

9.       Read your poetry out loud to check cadence.

10.   One poor (lazy) line sinks a poem.

11.   Engage with art of all types regularly; poetry is art, artistic taste brushes off on your work.

12.   Compile a list of events/experiences/sights from your past and present life that could spark poetry.

13.   Look at day to day events in terms of their writing potential and take notes.

14.   Create a mood for your creativity with evocative music, images, smells etc.

15.   Poems seldom arrive in finished state; be patient, leave them to sit, and edit them after a reasonable period of cooling off time.

16.   Retain older versions of poems. Rewriting can change the tenor of a piece of work. It may transpire that you have more than one poem among a series of drafts.

17.   Old poems, that have been unsuccessful, can prove excellent sources of lines that, stitched together, recombine into  new and successful poems.
18. Get yourself a critic, who sees the world your way, but knows enough to give informed opinions.